


Sweet William

by apple_pi



Category: The Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M, fairy tale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-04-01
Updated: 2005-04-01
Packaged: 2018-07-27 09:31:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7612864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apple_pi/pseuds/apple_pi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Monaboyd fairy tale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet William

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magickalmolly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magickalmolly/gifts).



> You should know that Rapunzel was the name of an herb (aka rampion, if you’re into that kind of thing). Also: the Brothers Grimm? Some messed up dudes. Oh, and please don’t go eating flowers based on my fic, ‘kay? ‘Kay.

Once upon a time, a gentle peasant and his wife longed with all their hearts for a child. After many years of hoping, it seemed their wish would be granted, but the pregnancy was difficult for the woman. Now, the peasant couple lived in a small cottage which overlooked a beautiful garden, but the garden was surrounded by a high wall and guarded by a fierce enchanter, who turned any who dared trespass into frogs. One day the pregnant woman stood in her attic and saw the enchanter’s beautiful flower beds full of Sweet William. She began to long for the flowers with such a passion that she told her husband that if she could not have them, she would most certainly die. Her husband, fearing for his love in her delicate state, decided that he must steal some of the enchanter’s flowers, and so that night he climbed stealthily over the wall and plucked two handfuls of the fragrant blossoms. When he returned home, his wife took them and ate them in a fresh salad.

But the fragrance and perfect deliciousness merely made her longing worse, and she began to grow thin and pale with longing for more of the flowers. Her husband knew that he must fetch more for her, and so that night he once again climbed the enchanter’s wall.

But just as he was about to make his escape, posies of blossoms clutched tight to his chest, the enchanter appeared. 

The magician was both tall and fearsome, with a rich and terrifying voice and beady, frightening eyes. “Peasant!” he cried out. “How dare you invade my peaceful garden! I shall now transform you into a frog, and your mournful croaking shall warn other trespassers to stay away from this sanctuary!”

“Oh!” The peasant dropped to the earth in abject fear. “Please, great lord, do not curse me so! My wife is pregnant, and if she cannot have more of these beautiful blossoms she will surely die, and with her our unborn child!”

The enchanter raised one well-plucked eyebrow. “You have touched my heart,” he said. “I will allow you all the _Dianthus barbatus_ you would like, on one condition.”

“Of course, my lord.” The peasant trembled in fear.

“When the child is born, you must give it to me to raise. I will be kind and the child shall be well-treated—and I shall give your wife magical potions to ensure that you have as many more children as you would like after this first one.”

The peasant could see no choice but to agree, and so he nodded, sorrow and fear tearing at his heart.

So it has been written, so it came to pass: When the peasant woman came to her bed, the enchanter appeared within the room, and as soon as the child—a healthy boy—was delivered, the enchanter wrapped it warmly and vanished again.

~*~

The enchanter raised the child tenderly and called him Sweet William, for he was as fair as the flowers his mother had craved, with eyes of the purest green and soft ginger-coloured hair that fell sweetly round his face and shoulders. But as William grew older, so the enchanter’s jealousy of his beauty grew, too, and when William turned sixteen years of age, the enchanter could no longer abide the certainty that the boy might one day be seen and seduced, as would surely happen were any man or woman outside the wall-girded circle of their home to see him. And so he spirited William away to a high tower in the middle of a forest, and trapped the child there in a high room without door or stair.

Alone in the room, William languished with only the books and the stars for company. His face remained fair and smooth, and his hair grew longer and longer until it trailed about the tower by his feet. He soon learned to braid it, and on some days the enchanter would come and stand at the foot of the tower and call out: “Sweet William, O William, let down your hair,” and then William would lower his braids out the window for the sorcerer to clamber up.

Thus the years passed.

One day a young prince was riding in the forest, weary and far from home, lost and seeking sanctuary. As he rode he heard a sweet voice floating down, it seemed, from the very sky above. Prince Dominic guided his steed toward the sound, and saw the bare grey stones of the tower rising through the trees. He circled the tower seeking entrance, for William’s beautiful voice still wound on, singing of love and loneliness and the high, cold songs learned in isolation with stars and wind and sunlight for company, and Dominic longed to see the face of the singer with a passion that burned like fire.

There was neither door nor window, however, and Dominic despaired of reaching the singer. He dismounted and unsaddled his horse, tethering it to a tree; when the voice stopped at last, Dominic wept, then wrapped himself in his cloak to sleep on the chill earth of the forest.

The next morning, Dominic awoke to hear someone walking through the wood nearby. He prudently kept silent, then crept through the forest and watched as the enchanter, by now an old man with bushy white brows and bony hands, stand beneath the tower’s single window.

“Sweet William, O William, let down your hair,” the enchanter said, and a single rope of gleaming copper dropped from the window. Dominic watched as the enchanter climbed upward and disappeared, and then when the enchanter left by the same means.

When he was certain the magician had gone for good, Dominic stood beneath the tower’s wall. “Sweet William, oh William, let down your hair,” Dominic called.

The rope appeared immediately, and Dominic realised it was woven of shining hair. He took a deep breath and climbed upward.

When he toppled over the windowsill and into the high tower room, he was struck dumb by the loveliness of the youth he saw before him.

William had come into his adulthood now, and was the most beautiful man Dominic had ever seen. His hair it was that made the copper rope, and it fell from a high, smooth forehead. His eyes were wide and the perfect green of springtime’s first leaf; his mouth was a bud, a blossom as sweet and shapely as any found upon the apple bough. His form was comely, also, and Dominic felt love and passion mingle in his body and soul as he beheld Sweet William for the first time.

William, for his part, was quite astounded to see a man in his tower room—and such a man! Dominic was golden from sun and wind, with hair the colour of sunlight and eyes the restless blue and grey of the sea that William could see far away, out his tower window. His soft lips were parted in surprise as he gazed upon William, and his body was lean and sinewed, clothed in a rich tunic and leggings of fine wool. Silver rings gleamed upon his shapely fingers, and William was at once frightened and drawn to him.

“Who are you?” each man asked at the same moment, and then they both laughed—William like bells and Dominic like honey.

~*~

Dominic came every day to the tower, and every day William let down his braid and allowed the young prince to enter his chamber. At first Dominic was shy, and made no advances on the youth. Instead he told William stories of the world outside his tower—of princes and kings, the ocean and the meadows, of good folk and bad and the simplicities and complexities of life. William, in his turn, spoke to Dominic of the changing seasons, of the life he saw in the forest below and the clouds above, of the measured dance of the stars and the way the sunlight played on the faraway sea.

Dominic told William of his life as the youngest of four princes, of being tutored and taught how to rule, all in the constant knowledge that it would never be his place to reign. He told William of how he longed for the water—longed to take ship and sail away, leave behind his unhappy family and precarious future, set his foot upon a land where no one knew him or knew of his position.

William told Dominic of being raised by the enchanter—the magic he had learned and the magic he had been denied, the books the enchanter tucked hastily into his pockets when William asked to see and the way the enchanter’s eyes jealously followed William everywhere whenever he came. He told Dominic of how he longed to be free—to walk on the earth and touch the trees, to hear voices beyond his own and live with the knowledge that his choices were his own, to fail or succeed, even to live or to die.

And of course, they fell in love, the prince and the prisoner.

And one day William reached to touch Dominic’s hand, and Dominic stroked his cheek, and they fell upon one another, mouths and hands and limbs entangling until neither knew who had cried out and who was silent, whose hands were holding and whose were held, who blushed and who blanched and who sang with pleasure as sweet as the flowers that blossomed in the enchanter’s garden, so many miles away.

Dominic promised himself to William before he left. Promised that he would go to his home and return as soon as he could, bringing a silken rope and another horse, and he and William would escape. They would flee the sorcerer and the king and sail over the sea together, no longer a prince and no longer a prisoner—only William and Dominic. Only together.

William wept and bade him farewell, and lowered him gently to the forest floor, then drew his hair up and stared at the long, heavy coils of it in hatred. How he longed to cut it off and be free of it, but he must bide yet a while with its burden and curse, he knew.

The next morning William heard a voice calling out from below: “Sweet William, O William, let down your hair.”

His heart sang, believing perhaps his love had returned so quickly, and William hastily threw his copper braid from the window.

He knew immediately, however, that it was the enchanter who had come to visit, for Dominic was never so cruel in his haste to ascend—he was light and gentle, fearing to harm William’s head. And so William’s face was as meek and mild as ever it could be when finally the enchanter climbed into the chamber.

But the enchanter was not a magician for naught—he knew, of course, that his Sweet William had been plucked—and not by him! In his rage he flew at the young man with a knife and cut off the beautiful braid.

And then William committed, perhaps, the greatest offense he could have done; he stood upright, blazing and beautiful and strong, and he spat all his painful words at the magician: “I am glad you have cut it, glad, I tell you, for you are no lord but lord of the trapped, you are no kind keeper but a gaoler! I hated that hair and I hate you! I am glad to be free of it and shall be gladder still to be free of you!” 

His anger and his fierce beauty woke a ravening beast in the dark soul of the enchanter, and he seized William by the tattered locks of his gingery hair and pulled him into a magical whirlwind. When he thrust the lad out and stepped out with him, it was onto a deserted island, lush and green and empty.

“Free of me you shall be,” the enchanter cried out, “but alone you shall be, too—never shall your seducer find you, here in this most desolate stretch of the sea!” And he vanished, and William fell to his knees in the sand and wept bitter tears, consoled not at all by the small book he had managed to slip from the sorcerer’s pocket in the heart of the whirlwind.

~*~

Now Dominic was true to his word, though his trial was a sore one. When he came home after so many weeks of being thought dead, there was much noisy rejoicing and much quiet disquiet—his brothers had been secretly glad to see him gone, and his place was more perilous than ever in that troubled kingdom by the sea. It was long days before Dominic could escape the watchful eyes of his family, both malign and devoted. As soon as his chance arose, however, he seized it and stole away, unseen and as quickly as he could.

When he came to the tower in the clearing, he stood below the single window with his heart full of joy at the prospect of being reunited with his love. 

“Sweet William, O William, let down your hair!” he called.

The shining braid appeared and Dominic climbed it, his silken rope coiled about his shoulder.

Imagine his surprise and horror, then, to see not his beautiful lover, but an aged and fearsome lord, dressed all in sumptuous robes and bearing the unmistakable odour of magic as he dropped the ragged end of William’s severed braid. “Sweet William no more!” the enchanter cried angrily. “You have turned his sweetness all to rank rut, withered his bloom before it could ripen to perfection!”

Dominic was horrified—what had the sorcerer done to his beloved? “How dare you speak of Sweet William so!” he shouted in tearful rage. “You knew naught of him, you foolish old man!” Saying so, he rushed at the enchanter, reaching for his sword.

The enchanter, though, was well-versed in the haste of youth, and he evaded the young prince’s attack with ease, laughing with mockery as he stepped aside. “Stand where you are,” he commanded, pointed one long and bony finger at the youth.

Dominic could not but do as he was bidden, and he stood as though trapped in amber as the old man stalked closer and closer, until the wizard’s faded gaze clashed with Dominic’s fiery one.

“Go away from here,” the enchanter hissed, “go and search in vain for your love—seek as you may, you shall never find him. And for as long as your feet shall wander, so long shall your loins be cold, your blood be ice, your breast be frozen and painful. So long as you seek him, so long shall your manhood be withered and spoiled—so long as you burn, never shall you find release, never shall you know surcease from passion’s passionless embrace.” 

The enchanter stroked one thin finger down Dominic’s breast, and Dominic, held motionless in his spell, shuddered to feel the geas laid upon him.

The enchanter vanished; Dominic fled.

~*~

Dominic wandered, directionless and blind, and learned exactly what the enchanter had meant by his vile curse. He searched throughout the known lands for word of William, the youth as beautiful as springtime, but nowhere could he find a sign of him. He came one day to the shores of the sea, only a furlong form the castle where he had grown to adulthood, but no one now recognized the thin man he had become.

Bearded and fierce, he apprenticed himself to a shipwright and built a small boat, seeking to leave the lands of men forever—he hoped that in the ocean’s tender and merciless embrace he might find, if not peace, then oblivion, for every day his body burned with his longing for William, and every day he burned without surcease, for the enchanter’s spell denied him even the simplest of private pleasures, no matter how his mind cried out for relief and created sweet fantasies of love, need, and tenderness.

He sailed far out into the blue of the sea, until his water began to fail and the very stars above seemed to beckon him into strange dreams and illusions. A storm saved him from death of thirst, and the very next day he saw a tiny blur of cloud upon the edge of vision—unmistakable sign of land in this barren desert of salt and wet.

Desperate for relief, Dominic determined to steer his ship toward whatever isle he found, and make it his home, at least until the heartache overcame him and he could at last find the courage to take his own life.

And so it was that he landed upon a narrow shore early the next morning, and saw a small house, rich but simple, beneath the tangled jungle’s shade.

Dominic rubbed his eyes, but the house did not disappear, and so, with a weary shrug, he trudged through the fine white sand to beg for food and water.

Imagine his surprise, then, when the small wooden door opened to his knock and revealed William, Sweet William to his wondering eyes.

“At last,” William said, “I’ve watched the stars and waited for so long.” And he fell on Dominic and his tears were hot and scalding upon his neck, sliding down Dominic’s breast to thaw the enchanter’s icy spell.

And so Dominic was freed, and his passion restored, rising to meet William’s own. They stayed upon the isle, for William’s book of spells had made it a haven and a sanctuary, with all the comforts they could need, and those they simply desired provided by one another. And they loved one another long and well in that sweet paradise, where the verdure was as green as William’s eyes and the sunlight was as golden as Dominic’s hair, and they lived together, happily ever after.

~The End~


End file.
